Books by Gary Graybill

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

It’s Time for “True but Strange News”

Thee, Not Me: American "millennials" (those
aged 18 to 29) continue a "long-standing tradition," The Washington
Post wrote in December, describing a Harvard Institute of Politics poll on
their views on war. Following the recent Paris terrorist attacks, about 60
percent of U.S. millennials said additional American troops would be needed to
fight the Islamic State, but 85 percent answered, in the next question, that
no, they themselves were "probably" or "definitely" not
joining the military.

Floridians

(1)
Police in St. Petersburg reported the December arrest of a 12-year-old boy
whose rap sheet listed "more than 20" arrests since age 9. He, on a
bicycle, had told an 89-year-old driver at a gas station that the man's tire
was low, and when the man got out to check, the boy hopped in the car and took
off. (2) A driver accidentally plowed through two small businesses in Pensacola
in December, creating such destruction that the manager of one said it looked
like a bomb had hit (forcing both -- a tax service and a casket company -- to
relocate). The driver told police he was attempting to "travel through
time."

Compelling
Explanations

(1)
Breen Peck, 52, an air traffic controller who has been having career troubles
in recent years, was arrested during a traffic stop on New York's Long Island
in December when officers found illegal drugs in his car. "That's
meth," he said. "I'm an air traffic controller." "I smoke
it to stay awake." (2) In a "she-said/he-said" case, wealthy Saudi
businessman Ehsan Abdulaziz, 46, was acquitted of rape in December in England's
Southwark Crown Court, apparently persuading jurors of "reasonable
doubt" about his DNA found in the alleged victim's vagina. Perhaps, his
lawyer said, Abdulaziz was still aroused after sex with the other woman in the
apartment and

(In)Competent
Criminals

Oops!
(1) Jasper Harrison, 47, working inside the storage unit in Edgewater, Florida,
where he grows his marijuana, heard a helicopter overhead on Dec. 9, panicked,
and called 911 to turn himself in to pre-empt what he presumed was a SWAT raid.
Actually, the helicopter belonged to a local news station headed elsewhere, but
police later arrested Harrison based on the 911 call. (2) Lloyd Franklin, 34
and suspected in a North Carolina double murder, fatally shot himself in a
Bensalem, Pennsylvania, motel room in November when police knocked on the door.
However, cops actually had come to arrest another man in the room on a parole
violation.